Grand Marnier® History

Grand Marnier®, as the story goes, has famed hotelier César Ritz to thank for its name. When he first tasted “Curaçao Marnier”, he advised his friend Louis-Alexandre Marnier Lapostolle that the orange liqueur needed a grander name. Voila. Grand Marnier®. For more than 150 years, and six generations as a family business, the Grand Marnier® bottle with its cognac pot-still shape, famous red moiré ribbon and wax seal have remained the same. The recipe remains a family secret, cognac blended with the distilled essence of the “Citrus bigaradia”, a rare Caribbean orange, exotic and a luxury in the 1800s.

Grand Marnier® Liqueur, has become a part of history, from a bottle discovered in the wreckage of the Titanic and now installed in the Titanic Museum to infamous cocktails throughout the ages from the Red Lion in the 1930s to the B-52 and Grand Cosmopolitan in the 80s and 90s. For more than 25 years it has been the most widely exported French liqueur, the mellowness of the cognac with the essence of orange enjoyed in over 150 countries.